Pages

Tuesday, 27 November 2012

Oatcakes

I had always loved oatcakes but I had never thought
to make them myself until my friend Emily, an American writer then living in
the Blue Mountains, just west of Sydney, met a Scottish novelist visiting Australia and began a long
distance love affair not only with him, but this one particular specialty of
his homeland. She’d return from
Glasgow bemoaning the high cost of this Scottish standard in Australian
supermarkets. I turned, as you do,
to Nigella Lawson. Of course she
had the solution. It’s amazing
just how easy they are to make and how few ingredients you need, all of which
are probably already in your pantry.

Oatcakes aren’t
cakes per se, but dense, chewy, savoury crackers on which to pile all manner of good
things. I favour cheese, whether a
wedge of soft brie or camembert, a sharp cheddar or a stinky blue, ideally
embellished with a smear of quince paste.
There’s something
pleasantly austere about these very plain biscuits. Something straight-forward, no-nonsense. They’re not so much moreish, as
satisfyingly substantial, like a bowl of porridge. My
grandmother was Scottish and though she never made these for me, they remind me
of her in some small way. And now Emily too, since she married the Scot and lived happily ever after on a loch, far, far away.

Oatcakes

From Nigella
Lawson’s How to Be a Domestic Goddess

I usually double
this recipe and make lots. They
keep well in an air-tight container.

1 cup plus 2 tablespoons
quick cooking oats (if you have regular rolled oats, just blitz them in the
food processor to break them down a bit)

pinch of salt

1/4 teaspoon baking
soda

1 tablespoon lard or
butter, melted

6-14 tablespoons very
hot water (I only ever need 6)

Preheat oven to
400 deg F.

Put oats in a
bowl and add salt and baking soda.
Make a well, pour in the fat, and, stirring with a wooden spoon, enough
hot water to mix to a stiff dough.
Knead it for a while to make it come smoothly together, then roll out as
thinly as you can. Cut into
triangles or rounds with a knife or a cookie cutter, bake on an
ungreased sheet for 15-20 minutes until the edges are turning golden brown and
the oatcakes themselves are firm (they’ll crisp up on cooling). Remove to a
wire rack to cool.